The Knitting and Stitching Show

After a rather busy week which involved starting my uni course, wandering around Brick Lane for a project (and a rather amazing bagel), playing host to both my boyfriend and my Mum, all I should have done on Sunday was sleep in and relax right? Oh no! It was the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace! So at around 9am Sunday morning, Mum and I hopped onto a bus, then a tube and then another bus to make the annual pilgrimage to our favourite show.

I never fail to be inspired by shows like this - the student showcase is always amazing, there's always new things to see, and of course LOTS of things to splash your cash on. My Mum ended up buying a grand total of THREE books - Woodland Knits by tiny owl knits; Faux Taxidermy Knits by Sincerely Louise (notice a love of animal-inspired, slightly kitsch in a great way theme here?) and finally Toasty Volume 1 from Coop Knits. All are fabulous books and I'm half-hoping there'll be some kind of fake taxidermy tiger in my living room when I go home for Christmas!

Mum also got her paws on a beautiful skein of Titus yarn in Eccup from baa ram ewe. Titus is a wonderful yarn - 100% British made from Wensleydale (not the cheese), Blue-faced Leicester and Alpaca, all spun up in Yorkshire. Speaking to them on their stand you really got the impression of how proud they were of Titus, and so they should be - the colours are to die for and I'm so excited to see what new shades they release.

http://baaramewe.co.uk/products/titus-original-4-ply?variant=308252271

I had the pleasure of not only nabbing the most recent Selvedge issue for a fiver (very exciting as it's the Bible of Textiles and was also am issue based around knit), but also discovering a new magazine! Pom Pom Magazine is my new favourite read - short and sweet, it comes packed with beautiful knitting patterns, articles and recipes! So all my favourite things in one handy neat little package.

Winter 2013 Pompom Mag

I got the Winter 2013 issue, partly because it'll be going out of print soon but also because it had pictures of the Northern Lights in there - and I'm a sucker for anything remotely Scandi. 

In between reading and buying books and magazines, we both headed over to Black Sheep Wools and chatted with Sara - don't forget that you can download my cowl pattern from there now! We also had a lovely little chat with Stuart Hilard from the Great British Sewing Bee, who's released his book Sew Fabulous and was hanging out on Lady Sew and Sew's stand. He was a big fan of my cowl so hopefully he'll give it a knit too!

At the end of the day I was absolutely exhausted, but so happy I went. It's always worth the effort, and with a large haul of new patterns and reading material I really can't complain.

Sublime Natural Aran Yarn and Pattern

So, at the end of what has proved to be a rather busy month, I can finally reveal what I've been working on for none other than Black Sheep Wools! In order to promote some new yarn, they wanted me to review the yarn and create a brand new pattern that will be available for free download from their website. Having been creatively bone idle for most of the summer I was itching to do something and this was the perfect opportunity to get my hands on the knitting needles again. 

The yarn is Sublime Natural Aran in Ecru, Portobello, Smithy and Gracie. The colours are beautiful - Portobello and Gracie are really rich, almost jewel-tones while Smithy is more marly and makes for a nice contrast with the other colours.The yarn is really lovely to knit with and, although at first I thought it was quite lightweight for an Aran, it thickens out to make a nice soft and fluid material. It is 100% wool, so it is a little fuzzy but lovely and soft, and I reckon this will keep me nice and cosy during the winter months. It's also made in England and supported by the Campaign for Wool, so you can rest assured that by buying this yarn you'll be doing England's sheep and wool industry some good!

So onto my pattern, which I hope showcases just how gorgeous this yarn is. Interestingly enough, the colours that were sent to me are reminiscent of the colour palette of the Anglesey landscape, which is lucky for me as I already had an entire project's worth of research! However I decided to expand my research and develop my Final Major Project even more, moving away from my painterly, abstract knits and looking back at traditional Welsh or Fair Isle patterns.

After knitting a few samples up I became very interested by figuring out ways to translate woven patterns into Fair Isle. Weaving, especially tapestry weaving, gives you more freedom with the amount of colours you can use whereas Fair Isle only allows you to use two per row, so this involved some tweaking and simplifying of traditional patterns such as check or welsh blankets. I really liked my Welsh Tapestry Blanket sample - both the way it looked and how it links back to my original inspiration worked really well and so I got to tweaking it, crafting it into a cowl shape and size and voila! Ready to knit!

Welsh Tapestry Blanket example

My samples, and Sublime Natural Aran Swatches

I'm really pleased with how it's turned out and I can't wait to see what you all make of it too! The rib gives a nice border and prevents the edge of the cowl curling over to reveal the inside, something I wasn't so keen on in my other three cowls. It's nice and tall too - so it'll definitely keep you warm on the side of a Welsh mountain.

The pattern is available to download from Black Sheep Wool's free pattern page right now and you can get the yarn from here! Simples.

New and exciting things!!

Been a long time since my last post so I thought I'd better keep updated! There are some pretty exciting things happening in the next few weeks, mainly that I'm moving to London to start university at Chelsea College of Arts!

It really is such a beautiful building, can't believe I'm actually going to be studying at the same place as artists like Peter Doig and David Hockney!

I've also been working on some new knitwear designs, so watch this space - all shall be revealed soon! In the meantime I'll be thinking of some new features for this blog, so my posts aren't as sporadic.

Paper Collages

New today for sale on my Etsy shop are three tiny paper collages based on my paintings of Anglesey. I made them by picking and painting colour samples, then cutting and tearing these to make images that simplify the landscape and create new textures and patterns.

I've mounted them to fit into 5" x 7" frames, so they're great for adding little splashes of colour to even the tiniest of walls/spaces - please take a look right here

Seaweed Fair Isle Cowl

Last but certainly not least, (my personal favourite) is the Seaweed cowl.

This one simplified a loose ink drawing of seaweed into a knittable image, which becomes fairly abstract and organic when the cowl is being worn.

You can see the links between photo, image and knitting sample here - all with the same distinct seaweed shape but each material/technique obviously offering different qualities! When I made the knitting sample, I was exploring duplicate stitch, which is how I managed 3 colours. The pattern for the seaweed remained largely the same when I was translating it for the cowl knitting pattern, with the exception of dropping the duplicate stitch element.

You can see the resulting final pattern more clearly here. There are 3 repeats lengthways, and the seaweed motif is mirrored in the round, which I think adds to the organic effect. Colours were picked out from my matching silk scarf (to be revealed later!) and I think they compliment each other really nicely, especially thanks to the yarn I used (Rowans SilkTwist) which has an almost glowy effect. Again, this cowl is available to purchase from my Etsy shop right here or, if you want to knit it yourself in your own colours then you can buy the pattern from Ravelry!!

Heather Fair Isle Cowl

Now I've given you a brief introduction to how I designed my cowls, and showed you my Holyhead Mountain cowl - it's time to meet cowl number 2, Heather.

This cowl was born out of scanning and blowing up my paintings of heather by massive amounts. "That's a nice painting," my tutor would say. "Let's blow it up by 200% again!" The result was an abstract mishmash of colour and texture.

I, like before, took the information in the image and tried to replicate that in my knitting samples. I practised with different colour combinations, and found that using colours quite similar worked really nicely together, and created subtle, organic pattern. 

Intarsia interpretation, which I didn't like as much - blocks of colour are less visually appealing. 

The end pattern used 3 complementary colours in purple and pink tones, together with one turquoise contrast, mixed with pale green lace weight yarn to add extra depth and variation to the colour. I knitted this cowl with a provisional cast on, and joined it with kitchener stitch - rather than knitting it in the round as I did with the other ones. 

I really love how this pattern combines geometric and organic shapes to create a really unique and interesting design. 

Like the Holyhead Cowl, you can download the pattern from Ravelry, or buy the original cowl from my Etsy shop! Please take a look and have a go!

Choosing the colours that go!

A while ago, the yarn shop where I got all my yarn for projects from published a really lovely article about me on their blog - which I stupidly missed! Anyway I thought I'd share it because it describes perfectly an important part of the process for me and the rest of their blog is fantastic as well! Give it a read!

Choosing the colours that go!